Topic
Lycaena rubidus
About: Lycaena rubidus is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 2 publications have been published within this topic receiving 233 citations. The topic is also known as: Lycaena rubida.
Papers
TL;DR: Males of two closely related, co-occurring species of Lycaena butterflies have dorsally blue or red-orange plus ultraviolet wings andVirgin females accept only conspecific males, probably chosen by wing color.
Abstract: Males of two closely related, co-occurring species of Lycaena butterflies have dorsally blue (Lycaena heteronea) or red-orange plus ultraviolet (Lycaena rubidus) wings. Males are selectively territorial against conspecific males. Virgin females accept only conspecific males, probably chosen by wing color. Females are nonterritorial and spend most of their adult activity ovipositing on the correct larval food plants. Eyes of both species contain four spectral types of visual pigments (P360, P437, P500, and P568) but the distribution of these pigments within the receptor mosaic is quite different between both species and sexes. The ventral eye region of L. heteronea is tetrachromatic but that of L. rubidus is trichromatic, lacking the blue-sensitive visual pigment P437. The dorsal eye region of males of both species is dichromatic (P360 and P437). Visual-pigment spectra and wing-reflectance spectra are well matched for effective discrimination of wings of conspecific males from those of other species. The dorsal region of female eyes is trichromatic, containing P360, P437, and P568. The third visual pigment, P568, is important for long-range detection by ovipositing females of red coloration on Eriogonum and Rumex food plants. P568 has the same absorbance spectrum as the human red-cone and is considerably red-shifted compared to the P530 possessed by most insects. That the sexes and closely related species can have such major differences in distribution of visual pigments indicates that the visual system is as readily altered as wing coloration in the course of adaptive evolution.
158 citations
TL;DR: The butterfly Lycaena rubidus has evolved sexually dimorphic eyes due to changes in the regulation of opsin expression patterns to match the contrasting life histories of males and females, and this novel blue opsin gene duplication may help explain the blueness of blue lycaenid butterflies.
Abstract: Although previous investigations have shown that wing coloration is an important component of social signaling in butterflies, the contribution of opsin evolution to sexual wing color dichromatism and interspecific divergence remains largely unexplored. Here we report that the butterfly Lycaena rubidus has evolved sexually dimorphic eyes due to changes in the regulation of opsin expression patterns to match the contrasting life histories of males and females. The L. rubidus eye contains four visual pigments with peak sensitivities in the ultraviolet (UV; lambdamax=360 nm), blue (B; lambdamax=437 nm and 500 nm, respectively) and long (LW; lambdamax=568 nm) wavelength range. By combining in situ hybridization of cloned opsin-encoding cDNAs with epi-microspectrophotometry, we found that all four opsin mRNAs and visual pigments are expressed in the eyes in a sex-specific manner. The male dorsal eye, which contains only UV and B (lambdamax=437 nm) visual pigments, indeed expresses two short wavelength opsin mRNAs, UVRh and BRh1. The female dorsal eye, which also has the UV and B (lambdamax=437 nm) visual pigments, also contains the LW visual pigment, and likewise expresses UVRh, BRh1 and LWRh mRNAs. Unexpectedly, in the female dorsal eye, we also found BRh1 co-expressed with LWRh in the R3-8 photoreceptor cells. The ventral eye of both sexes, on the other hand, contains all four visual pigments and expresses all four opsin mRNAs in a non-overlapping fashion. Surprisingly, we found that the 500 nm visual pigment is encoded by a duplicate blue opsin gene, BRh2. Further, using molecular phylogenetic methods we trace this novel blue opsin gene to a duplication event at the base of the Polyommatine+Thecline+Lycaenine radiation. The blue opsin gene duplication may help explain the blueness of blue lycaenid butterflies.
114 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2006 | 1 |
| 1991 | 1 |